[0:00] Philip Barrar: We're the first generation in history to be financially worse off than our parents' generation. Living out those American dreams feels out of reach for most American families. When talking to families, the ones that get ahead are typically the ones who are planning a modest $5, $10, or $15 a week contribution — in the first 18 years of a child's life, that could compound into a multi-million dollar retirement account.
[0:33] Rich Smith: Hello, my amazing audience, and welcome to the Revenue Science podcast. I'm Rich Smith — CMO, founder, investor, executive adviser, and lucky enough to be your host today. Here on Revenue Science, we translate marketing and sales complexity into boardroom clarity for CEOs and founders building predictable growth systems.
[0:55] Rich Smith: Today's guest is Philip Barrar, founder and CEO of Future Money, a company focused on helping people and organizations make smarter financial decisions in an increasingly complex world. Phil operates at the intersection of money, technology, and human behavior, which is exactly where many of today's most important growth decisions are made. So today we're going deep into the psychology of money, how trust is built, and what revenue leaders can learn from how people actually make decisions. Phil, welcome to Revenue Science.
[1:29] Philip Barrar: Thanks for having me, Rich.
[1:34] Rich Smith: Hey, I'm really excited about our conversation today — I think we've got a lot we could talk about. I thought maybe we'd start with the 60-second version of Future Money. Who do you serve, what problems are you solving, and where are you focused today?
[1:56] Philip Barrar: Yeah, absolutely. Future Money is a fintech platform that helps American families build generational wealth. We're the first generation in history to be financially worse off than our parents' generation. We feel that hurt of everyday life every time we go to the grocery store or fill up at the gas pump, and living out the American dream feels out of reach for most American families.
[2:20] Philip Barrar: When we talk to families, the ones that get ahead are typically the ones taking action today that could have a life-changing impact tomorrow. So Future Money is all about helping families build generational wealth by using the power of compound interest and time — where a modest $5, $10, or $15 weekly contribution in the first 18 years of a child's life could compound into a multi-million dollar retirement account.
[2:36] Philip Barrar: Where we're special is that we use the best tax-advantaged accounts for families in the U.S. — anything from a custodial Roth IRA, a junior Roth IRA, a 529 account, a 538 coming soon, and we just launched a Harvest account. Anything that can help boost that tax alpha is where we're focused.
[3:02] Rich Smith: Yeah, that's great. And the law of compounding interest is one of the most powerful functions in the universe. We tend to think of it in monetary terms, but it's true about really everything — from getting an education to investing in yourself. Those small changes really add up to a massive impact over time. I'm wondering — was there an inflection point where something fundamental clicked in your thinking about money and how people make decisions?
[3:37] Philip Barrar: Yeah, it's a great question. Let me introduce myself briefly. I'm originally born and raised in the U.S., but ended up going to school up in Montreal. Montreal's a great city, but the difference between going to school in Boston for $50,000 a year versus Montreal for $3,000 a year made it a no-brainer. I really love those no-brainer financial decisions — that was the first major one in my life.
[4:01] Philip Barrar: I graduated with a degree in management with a minor in marketing. I didn't know if I wanted to go into consulting or build a startup, and I dove into the deep end. I bootstrapped my first business, which was a great product triggered by a regulatory change back in 2013. I shut that business down after realizing we had a tiny total addressable market, pivoted to my next bootstrap business, sold that within six months, and then dove into building my first venture-backed business.
[4:43] Philip Barrar: During that stretch — going from bootstrapping my first two businesses to going from a broke student to a bootstrapped entrepreneur — I had to become really good at personal finance management. I was a U.S. citizen living in a foreign market, so I had access to tools my Canadian peers didn't, one of those being Acorns. So when it came time to launch my next business, I launched a roundup-to-invest platform called Mocha. We ultimately became the third-largest roundup-to-invest platform globally, and sold it back in 2021.
[5:15] Philip Barrar: During that time, my passion for building financially inclusive products really came to light — this idea of changing consumer behavior through great product, not through education. This idea of rounding up your purchases and investing for change is really what made it click for me.
[5:39] Rich Smith: Yeah, that's a great background — thanks for sharing that. I think as human beings we like to think we're rational, but the reality is we're more like meaning-making machines that feel and think occasionally. Most people assume financial decisions are rational — what are they getting wrong?
[6:07] Philip Barrar: It's highly emotional. At the end of the day, people spend more time optimizing their small spends, but when was the last time you renewed your car insurance? Most people just let it renew every year. Most people aren't thinking about mortgage refinancing — the massive financial decisions that could save you hundreds or thousands of dollars a year feel too big or too complex for most people.
[6:31] Philip Barrar: Saving and investing was like that for many years. We grew up in a great interest rate environment — when I opened my first savings account, it was paying around 5% on an FDIC-insured product. Today you get barely any yield, and after inflation, you get next to nothing. We went from a world where governments and companies provided pension plans and benefits, where banks provided all the return you needed, to a world where you have to manage your own investment portfolio — and that felt scary for a lot of people.
[7:10] Philip Barrar: What we found is people feel like they don't have enough money to get started, or they didn't feel like they had enough education, or it was just on a to-do list that never got shorter. So one of the things we did really well at the last company was identify the hooks and the framework that make it easy for people to get started — rounding up your purchases and investing spare change made it feel like it wasn't a big financial decision. It was a way to take action without feeling like there was a lot of risk or a lot at stake. By reducing the emotional complexity of the decision, we let people dip their toes in the water, learn along the way, and gradually get more sophisticated about their investments.
[8:01] Rich Smith: And where do you see the biggest gap between how people should make financial decisions and how they actually do?
[8:08] Philip Barrar: That's a really good question. I guess it comes down to two things. There's so much financial literacy content available today, and yet that's not where we spend our time. We've recently seen financial content bleed from online blogs and professionals over to fin-talk influencers. People spend their spare time scrolling social media, hear a concept in a bite-sized, easy-to-comprehend form, and think, "Maybe I should look into that more" — that's the trigger they use to take action.
[8:50] Philip Barrar: I think the awareness these social platforms bring is incredible. The concern is that not all the advice is sound, and it's sometimes misleading — but there's more good than harm, because people are taking more action than inaction. The other piece is we're largely reliant on word of mouth from friends and family, because people feel like someone else has already screened the things they need to do, and it makes them feel like they're not alone. That feeling of not being alone is really important — when we think about what builds trust, word of mouth is such a huge one for finance.
[9:41] Rich Smith: Yeah, it is — and it's huge for many industries, but I think finance and healthcare especially, word of mouth is a really potent thing. I'd love to switch a bit and talk about the business side. What do you attribute your current growth to — product-market fit, or something else?
[10:14] Philip Barrar: Right now, a combination of two things. We haven't found product-market fit by any means, but we're very confident about the industry we're building toward, and we're rapidly experimenting. What excites me is there's a sense of urgency today that didn't exist 10 or 15 years ago. The generation having kids today went through the Y2K boom, the 2008 financial crisis, the pandemic — all these once-in-a-lifetime events — and they realize how many once-in-a-lifetime events actually happen. With home affordability at an all-time low and inflation at an all-time high, things feel out of reach, and the next generation won't have the luxury past generations had.
[10:55] Philip Barrar: According to a new Credential study, 80% of parents today believe retirement savings should start at birth. Twenty years ago, people would have laughed if you talked about retirement accounts for kids. So the timing is really great in the market. The other thing that's happened recently is the current administration has really put a focus on building awareness around account types that help parents start investing.
[11:19] Philip Barrar: On this year's tax returns, there's a new Form 4547 that lets you open a 538 investment account for your kids — widely known as the "Trump account." It's a tax-deferred account, and people feel empowered to do something they couldn't before. Four million people have opened these accounts, and a million people will get a $1,000 account-opening bonus directly from the U.S. government for the new program. So there are government tailwinds as well as a cultural movement happening at the same time.
[12:04] Rich Smith: Not to go too far down this rabbit hole, but I think a lot of our audience will wonder — what's the difference between the 538 (the Trump account) and a 529, which most people are familiar with?
[12:19] Philip Barrar: Yeah, absolutely. The amazing thing is, today, 50% of the U.S. population still isn't aware of what a 529 account is, and only about 15% actually use one — which is a shame, because it's a very powerful account. The 529 lets you grow money tax-free for qualified education expenses. Recently, you can also roll money over from a 529 to a Roth IRA, as long as the account has been open for 15 years, the money is aged five years, and you handle a multi-year rollover while tracking the cost basis.
[12:52] Philip Barrar: This is the first time in history everyday Americans have been able to grow money tax-free from birth all the way to retirement, without needing the kind of unearned income traditionally available to business owners, high-net-worth individuals, child actors, and celebrities. So — 529 accounts grow tax-free primarily for education and can be rolled over for retirement. The 538, on the other hand, is a tax-deferred account you can open at birth. There may be government or private stipends contributed, employers can put in up to $2,500 per year per family, and you can contribute up to $5,000 per year total, all growing tax-deferred.
[13:40] Philip Barrar: At age 18, that account converts from a 538 to a traditional IRA, and withdrawals are taxed as ordinary income. So it's a less powerful tool, but one with a lot more awareness and support — still a great thing overall.
[14:03] Rich Smith: Yeah — so a couple of the key differences: the 529 grows tax-free, while the 538 is tax-deferred and operates more like a traditional IRA, and the 529 limits how you can use the funds a bit more than the 538 does. We don't need to go too deep into the mechanics, since I think most of our audience is more interested in the business side — but I thought that was helpful background, and it cleared a few things up for me too. I assume you've got investors in the new business, and probably some kind of advisory board or board of directors?
[14:51] Philip Barrar: Yeah.
[14:52] Rich Smith: I'm curious — when you're presenting to investors or your advisory board, how do you connect the behavioral finance side to the business outcomes they care about?
[15:05] Philip Barrar: It's interesting, because consumer finance has been beaten up in both public and private markets over the last few years — it's not an easy industry to build in. I build in this space because I'm passionate about financially inclusive products, but there are easier ways to build companies that cash flow faster than one like this. The beautiful thing about a company like ours is that if you can get the unit economics right — cost of acquisition and payback period — it builds a really sticky revenue model that gets people excited.
[15:45] Philip Barrar: So the first part of the equation is CAC and CAC payback period. Our cost of acquisition has to be accessible enough that we can cash flow it through the modest financing we've raised — about $5 million to date. We acquire customers in the tens of dollars, compared to banks, credit unions, and other investment companies that spend hundreds or thousands. And our business model is different — we make money through either an AUM fee or a SaaS-plus-AUM fee model, starting at zero dollars, with our top-tier product at $120 a year plus 20 basis points. Very accessible, low-cost pricing that works off scale.
[16:35] Philip Barrar: Payback period matters a lot to us because it determines how many customers we can acquire during an 18-month venture window, whether that's pre-seed, seed, or Series A. We think a lot about cost of acquisition and payback period so we can prove out what's needed to de-risk the business enough for the next round of investors and raise a larger round.
[16:57] Philip Barrar: But we do all of this knowing we have very strong economics once a customer is in and we've hit that payback period. These are retirement accounts for kids — people are opening them with 65-year time horizons. A $15 weekly contribution for the first 18 years of a child's life will compound to roughly a $3 million retirement account. Taking 20 basis points on a $3 million account is a really attractive business model, especially when we acquire a customer for a couple thousand dollars. For us, the unit economics were the floor — you can't scale a company and figure out the business model afterward. That's not the right way to do it in my opinion. But it lets us run experimentation and know the growth cycles will work nicely.
[17:58] Rich Smith: Yeah, you'd be amazed how many people start a business without a strategy or business model planned out intentionally in advance — it's quite common, at least in my experience. One thing I thought would be good to dig into further: churn has to be really important for you to understand and manage, because if you're making money on AUM fees over time, that's fantastic if the account sticks around and grows for 18 years or longer. But if people churn quickly, even with low cost of acquisition — and most people, when they calculate CAC, aren't counting all the opex across the organization — that ratio matters a lot.
[19:03] Rich Smith: So I'd imagine churn is extremely important to you. What are you doing to make these accounts stickier — not just keeping the account open, but getting people to save regularly and add to it? Because part of churn is account closure, but there's also what I used to call "silent attrition" in financial services — people don't close the account, they just stop using it or reduce their balances. Both kinds matter. I'll let you answer now.
[19:47] Philip Barrar: Great questions. I'll break it into two sections. First, what we call silent churn, or unrealized churn — a really important thing to look at. For us, the primary reasons people churn on these long-term accounts: one, they feel like they don't have the money available, whatever may have happened. They may have had a return item, which is a very painful, frictionful process, since banks charge outrageous fees for overdrafts. We do everything we can by checking bank balances in advance and building in a buffer before we pull funds, but a returned payment is always a painful moment and a point of reflection for a customer about whether it's the right time to be setting money aside.
[20:40] Philip Barrar: The second reason is we're still an early-stage company — if a user hits a bug, whether through a UX issue with a new feature or an interaction with customer support that wasn't fully polished, that's a big factor for churn in the early days. So product maturity and cash-flow friction are the two primary reasons for churn, and with a company like ours those are relatively low overall — we have a very sticky product.
[21:14] Philip Barrar: How we solve for unrealized churn is primarily through the onboarding funnel. We take everyone through a very specific experience — you could trip over our Facebook ad and glide through onboarding feeling like, "Wow, I'm investing for my kids, that was delightful." We're very intentional about the questions we ask — for example, gender-related questions that won't trip up different genders, to make sure we get the same conversion rate for both male and female audiences.
[21:39] Philip Barrar: That means avoiding complex jargon and keeping things accessible, because historically, male users facing uncertainty tend to power through by clicking "next" as much as possible, while female investors will pause and sometimes abandon the flow — leading to lower investment rates. Using accessible language everyone understands, regardless of investment knowledge, makes for a much more delightful user experience.
[22:13] Philip Barrar: The second thing is we default to recurring contributions. We don't ask during onboarding whether someone wants to make a $10,000 deposit — we say everyone should start with a modest $5, $10, or $20 weekly contribution. On average, our audience invests about $29 a week on the platform. Having recurring deposits enabled from day zero makes the habit loop a lot easier, because the action is automated and seamless.
[22:44] Rich Smith: That's music to my ears — the fact that you're focused so heavily on onboarding is one of those things many organizations don't invest enough time or intentionality into. You typically have somewhere between zero and 30 days to get a customer engaged and feeling the value of the product — otherwise you tend to lose them, no matter what the business is. I love that you're putting that kind of attention into onboarding.
[23:38] Rich Smith: And it sounds like — though you didn't quite say it this way — you're constantly working to remove friction from your funnel. Even something like gender-based questions isn't about being gender-biased, it's about being inclusive, because different people process decisions differently, and there are behavioral patterns you can design around. That's a great example of reducing friction to help people self-select into what you're offering. I'm curious — how do you design systems or processes that help guide people to make better decisions without overwhelming them?
[24:39] Philip Barrar: For us, it's about taking the investment complexity out of it. We want a product that works well whether you're a complete beginner opening your first investment account, or someone sophisticated — a venture capitalist who manages their own investments but wants the most comprehensive automation available anywhere else in the market. Making a product that ubiquitous isn't easy, because you're serving very different markets at the same time. What we try to do is make the experience expandable, like an accordion — a very light, guided experience by default, with full depth available if you want to drill into a section.
[25:37] Philip Barrar: For example, on Friday we launched a Harvest UTMA account. UTMA accounts are brokerage accounts in the child's name at the child's tax rate, which they get access to at 18. I've historically never been a huge fan of UTMAs because parents lose access at that point and kids can spend the money however they want — but they're still one of the most popular investment tools in the market for people investing for their kids, and we hadn't offered one until we really mapped out the tax advantage.
[26:05] Philip Barrar: You get $1,350 of standard deduction for children every year, and another $1,350 of long-term capital gains at a 0% tax rate — so up to $2,700 of tax-free growth in these accounts. You can do similar tax-gain harvesting, without the wash-sale rules that apply to losses. So we let people say, "I want to invest in a UTMA and grow it tax-free up to $2,700," or go in and set floors and toggle the standard deduction and long-term capital gains manually. These are things people used to track by hand — dividends, interest, doing it all at year-end — and largely wanted an automated solution for, which is now available for the first time through Future Money. We keep building things that are simple to check a box on, or dive deep into for full control.
[27:10] Rich Smith: Yeah — so what do most companies get wrong or misunderstand about influencing behavior like that, while still doing it ethically?
[27:22] Philip Barrar: That's a good question. I think most people build business models that aren't aligned with their users — they're trying to cash flow too early and too large. At the end of the day, if you focus and stay obsessed with your mission, building financial products with a patient time horizon, you can build a product with a great outcome. So the number one thing is patience — patience in the model, and patience building a 10x product, or in the age of AI, a 100x product — rather than trying to exploit or exclude people. Building something inclusive and available to everyone is extremely important, and we're seeing that reflected in some of the new products being built in the age of AI.
[28:13] Rich Smith: That's really great. I wonder if you could describe — because I think a lot of our audience would get value from this — how do you fight the tendency to want to cash flow too soon? You've been a bootstrapped entrepreneur several times, so you understand what it's like spending your savings, maxing out credit cards, borrowing against your house to get a company off the ground, and all you want is revenue as fast as possible. How do you personally fight that urge in your business, and what advice would you give others?
[29:01] Philip Barrar: It's an intrinsic belief, an intrinsic mission that you want to make an impact in people's lives. I know that doing the right thing will pay off in the long term, and it allows us to build a very competitive product — one that banks can't compete with out of the gate, because their overhead is too high and their investors' expectations are too high. Those constraints don't let them build the innovation we're building today. But it's also what sets us up for a great exit at the end of the day, because we can capture the value they're unwilling to create, not because they can't, but because of their cost structures and overhead.
[29:49] Philip Barrar: So we're building a business that will have a massive impact on people's lives, but is also very capital-efficient and, hopefully, a great business. That leads to my mantra: when people ask what I'm building for — an exit, going public — if you build a business that you want to own, others will too. You can cash flow it, spin off dividends, be acquired, or go public. It doesn't matter — you have all the options available as long as you focus on the fundamentals.
[30:23] Rich Smith: That's a great quote, actually — "build a business that you want to own, and others will too." I love that one. I may steal it from you from time to time, and I'll try to remember to give you credit. I think you said a couple of important things there. One is capitalization — in order to have that long-term view and do the right thing in the short term, you need the right capital structure to allow for that.
[30:58] Rich Smith: And the other thing — it really comes back to purpose or mission. If the mission is what's motivating you every day, you're much more likely to make long-term decisions instead of getting caught up in short-term thinking. If your only goal is to sell the company, you probably won't have that kind of staying power. But if your goal is to impact people's lives, and you truly believe in what you're doing, it helps you make those long-term decisions instead of chasing short-term outcomes.
[31:59] Philip Barrar: I strongly believe that if people are building a business just for a liquidity event, there are a lot easier ways to get that same liquidity. You could become an investment banker and take 4 to 8% of an exit, or go into consulting and influence large organizations for a hefty retainer. The amount of pain and challenge that goes into building a business isn't justified by the mere promise of a potential exit — especially since most businesses go belly-up to begin with. That's not enough drive for an entrepreneur to make it across the finish line, and you'll end up with a modest exit or none at all.
[32:50] Philip Barrar: But those who are passionate about solving the problem, and who don't really care about the outcome because they're willing to do what it takes, are typically the ones who end up with the massive exit — because they've unlocked something different. They're passionate enough to push harder than anyone else.
[33:12] Philip Barrar: Building a business isn't easy, and every entrepreneur will tell you this, but having a great support system is wonderful. I recently had my paternity leave — it started at 4:30 in the morning and finished at 1:00 p.m. I didn't have a day off from the day my son was born until Christmas Day, for about four months. I have an incredible wife who really supported us through a very difficult Q4 for the business, while I was pulling 20-hour days and doing only a few diaper changes. The promise of an exit doesn't get you through that hardship — but a customer grabbing your arm and saying, "Thank you for building a product like this for someone like me," is what really motivates you.
[34:01] Rich Smith: Yeah — and honestly, you struck a nerve there, because that's why I do what I do. I just love seeing great products and services come to market. And you mentioned it — so many entrepreneurs and small businesses fail, and the vast majority do fail. They don't necessarily fail because they have a bad product or service, or because they're bad people — they often fail because they haven't figured out how to get distribution in the marketplace they're going after.
[34:39] Rich Smith: That's what motivates me — I'm a consumer too, and I want these products to exist. When it works out for an organization, it's not just the entrepreneur who wins — it's their family, their employees, their employees' families, their investors, their customers, and their community. Everybody wins, and it has a massive ripple effect. So thank you for saying that, because it really struck home for me.
[35:14] Rich Smith: Maybe changing gears a bit — what widely accepted beliefs do CEOs or entrepreneurs have about starting or growing businesses that you think is just wrong?
[35:36] Philip Barrar: That's a great question. That it's easy to have an idea and go fundraise for it. I'm fortunate to have raised $5 million for Future Money after a $65 million exit where all my investors saw a 39 to 89% annualized return. So I'm a proven commodity when it comes to building a business in a space I'm deeply passionate about — and a $65 million exit opens a lot of doors, but it definitely doesn't write the check.
[36:14] Philip Barrar: The things that influence your ability to raise capital are largely outside an entrepreneur's control — what was the meeting immediately before yours, and what mood is the partner in when they sit down to give you 15 minutes? You can have the best pitch in the world, but if they're upset from their last meeting, they won't give you the time of day. There are times I'm flustered from back-to-back meetings and know I haven't communicated my message as well as I could have, in such a limited window.
[37:03] Philip Barrar: If your pitch isn't a 10 out of 10, there's a chance they write you off right there, even if you're a perfect fit for their fund — depending on where the fund is in its own fundraising cycle. If you go out to raise when everyone's at the tail end of their last cycle and funds are struggling to raise, that's difficult too. And then there's the geopolitical landscape — sometimes you're a perfect fit with a well-capitalized fund, but there's so much uncertainty in the world, whether in public markets, war, or new technologies.
[37:47] Philip Barrar: So the ability to fundraise for a business largely comes down to luck and timing more than idea and execution. Idea and execution are table stakes, but timing and luck are what get you across the finish line.
[38:04] Rich Smith: Yeah, I think that's widely underappreciated — how much timing and luck drive things forward. Though there are ways to "make your own luck," and you touched on a lot of that — things like the timing of your pitch, and getting in front of the right person at the right moment for them. You don't always know, but there are things you can do to influence how well you land from a timing perspective.
[38:45] Rich Smith: One other thing I wanted to dig into — you sound like a pretty data-driven guy. How do you balance making decisions based on data with human judgment?
[39:02] Philip Barrar: Yeah, great question, and there's no great answer.
[39:06] Rich Smith: That's why I asked it. [laughs]
[39:11] Philip Barrar: We like to drink from the fire hose — we consume large amounts of data very quickly and try to find the trend in what we're doing to make a data-informed decision. But at the end of the day, it's a combination of our knowledge, experience, unfair advantage, and lived experience. Data alone will draw you to the wrong outcome, and intuition alone will likely draw you to the wrong outcome too. There's always luck involved, and you might strike gold — but having your ear to the ground, investing in relationships and unfair information pipelines, and then using data to make informed decisions is really important.
[40:06] Philip Barrar: One framework I like, similar to RICE — reach, impact, confidence, and effort — is a probability-weighted outcome for decision-making on product releases: what's the probability of success, measured against effort and outcome, to determine the best option. A 10% chance at a multi-billion dollar exit versus a 100% chance at a million-dollar exit — I can tell you which one we're going after. That applies to decisions as big as which market to pursue or how to build our business model, down to how we set OKRs for the quarter.
[40:52] Rich Smith: One thing I see a lot is people building great models and gathering data, but becoming very susceptible to confirmation bias — finding data that supports conclusions or opinions they already hold, rather than letting the data give an honest answer. Have you put anything in place, personally or organizationally, to fight that tendency?
[41:27] Philip Barrar: That tendency isn't always a bad thing, because it can push you in a direction you have confidence in, and sometimes changing the narrative isn't a bad place to be — the role of an entrepreneur is to make the impossible possible. That said, it's important to have good accountability for what you're building, and that's where advisors, investors, and external accountability frameworks really help you stay on track.
[41:59] Philip Barrar: For us, we're often seeking feedback from the market — landing page testing, ad campaign testing for different value props, learning from entrepreneurs who've been in this industry about why they gave up or failed, and asking industry experts what we're not asking or thinking about. Framing questions the right way — "why shouldn't we do this" versus "why should we" — helps surface the facts we need. You might go in well aware of everything that could go wrong and still decide the risk is worth taking, but at least you're not going in with rose-colored glasses assuming it'll be easy.
[43:03] Rich Smith: Right — and those are all forms of red-teaming, really, where you're pressure-testing a decision. Another common technique is a premortem: imagine everything you're trying to do has gone horribly wrong, and ask why. That's another good way to fight confirmation bias. I'll shift gears again — what trend do you think will reshape financial behavior the most over the next three to five years?
[43:50] Philip Barrar: Which one? [laughs] Distribution. Distribution rules are being rewritten at a pace we've never seen before. It's still very difficult to build a financially regulated application quickly, so I don't think the threat of new entrants is any more competitive than it was pre-AI — but distribution is definitely much higher. This idea of "self-driving money," driving efficiency for things people neglect because they're difficult to solve for, will become much easier to optimize.
[44:24] Philip Barrar: So the prompts, and where and how people find and consume products, will change significantly. That's why we think about the products we build not as "an app," but as interface-agnostic — what's the interaction relationship we want with the consumer, and how do we manage that regardless of whether it's phone, SMS, app-based, web-based, or whatever the next interface turns out to be.
[45:01] Rich Smith: I completely agree. Having spent large parts of my career in financial services — mostly consumer financial products, which are largely commodities from company to company — a 30-year fixed, Fannie Mae-backed mortgage is the same product no matter who you get it from. It all comes down to who's getting better distribution and creating operational efficiency to drive the best pricing.
[45:39] Rich Smith: AI has the potential to dramatically change both the distribution and operational side. I spent a lot of time in mortgage companies — it shouldn't take 30 days to underwrite a loan when all the information exists digitally today. Mortgage and fintech companies are scrambling to solve that, and it's getting better, but with AI you can really see the opportunity to shorten the underwriting cycle and reduce costs, which reduces fees and interest rates as competition drives things toward pure competition and profits down, going back to classic economics.
[46:37] Rich Smith: I totally agree — it's often product times distribution cubed. You've got to really focus on distribution in that environment, and consumer expectations are changing. A 30-day window was fine 30 years ago; today, in such a competitive market, people want an instant everything. The product that got us here won't get us there.
[47:02] Philip Barrar: I think it's a great opportunity, and I completely agree — I see the same things in the mortgage and insurance industry.
[47:19] Rich Smith: Yeah, that's what I tell a lot of financial services people — your competition isn't so much other banks, particularly when you're thinking about distribution and customer experience. Your competition is Apple, it's Amazon. I can order something on Amazon and it shows up today. People don't want to wait 30 days for their mortgage — it's not tenable, and I know people are working on changing that.
[47:52] Rich Smith: This has been an amazing conversation, and I think we could probably keep going for a long time, but I'll bring it toward a close with a few questions. If you were rebuilding a revenue system today, what principles would guide you?
[48:08] Philip Barrar: For me, it's an obsession with CAC payback period and lifetime value. If you understand all the levers that influence those — for us, that's cost per click, click-through rate, cost per install, conversion rate, activation rate, and how those roll up into cost of acquisition and payback period — that's the primary driver. Maybe to a fault, I have an obsession with unit economics, and those two levers are central to my playbook.
[48:44] Rich Smith: That's a great answer. And if you could give a CEO one piece of advice about improving their decision-making, what would it be?
[48:52] Philip Barrar: One thing that changed my experience as a CEO was having an incredible executive coach. I was so busy in the day-to-day of the business, and having someone who could pull me up to the 1,000-foot level and help me identify what's actually important, using decision-making frameworks for things like acquisitions and raising capital, was an extremely valuable tool when we ultimately sold a company. Having an accountability partner, or a tool that plays that role, is really important.
[49:39] Philip Barrar: And too often, CEOs are too focused on the macro and not enough on the micro. The incredible CEOs I've met can zoom in and zoom out multiple times a day with incredible precision — zooming all the way in to understand consumer needs, and zooming out to see how that fits the broader market dynamics. That ability lets you build an incredibly competitive business.
[50:04] Rich Smith: That's fantastic advice, thank you. So Phil, if people want to learn more about you or Future Money, where's the best place for them to go?
[50:21] Philip Barrar: Yeah, absolutely — connect with me on LinkedIn, I'm very active there. Philip Barrar, B-A-R-R-A. And check out futuremoney.co if you want to open an account for your kids and get them started on the path to being future billionaires. You can use the code FOUNDER100 to get your first $100 in your account.
[50:42] Rich Smith: Nice — I'll be checking that out later today, and we'll put all those links in the show notes. Phil, I want to thank you so much for your time today. This has been a great conversation, and I think it added a lot of value that our audience is really going to enjoy. I feel privileged to have conversations like this, so it was a lot of fun for me too.
[51:06] Philip Barrar: It was great chatting — you asked all the tough questions, all the right questions. Thanks for having me, Rich, I really enjoyed it as well.
[51:13] Rich Smith: All right. Thanks for being here.
